Tuesday, February 01, 2005

On the Extortion Beat...

...We have today's reparations shakedown news:

J.P. Morgan Chase & Company's recent apology for ties to slavery and a corresponding $5 million scholarship program it set up for black students was a "step in the right direction for a tainted corporation," but the nation's no. 2 bank has a long way to go before it has fully paid its debt to African Americans, said one of the slave-reparations movement's central figures, Deadria Farmer-Paellmann.

And those ties were:

...between 1831 and 1865, two of J.P. Morgan Chase's predecessor banks - Citizens Bank and Canal Bank in Louisiana - accepted approximately 13,000 slaves as collateral for loans and ended up owning approximately 1,250 of them as a result of defaults.

....Citizens Bank and Canal Bank merged to form Canal Commercial Trust & Savings in 1924, which was liquidated during the Great Depression.

A federally chartered bank in May 1933 - the National Bank of Commerce in New Orleans - assumed some of the failed bank's assets and was a predecessor to Bank One Corporation, which was purchased by J.P. Morgan Chase last year.

Meaning JP Morgan Chase is apologizing and giving away $5 million of its stockholders money, for something legal done by two banks 150 years ago. Not for anything JP Morgan or Chase had anything to do with.

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